


Stop, Restart. Again.

by kihadu



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1216552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>three different attempts at something involving science boyfriends without getting in Vanessa's way</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop, Restart. Again.

**Author's Note:**

> gosh this wasn't in my plans for today at all

When Vanessa walks into their lab with some blushing aide at her side, Newt sees her first. He straightens and immediately hits his head on the light overlooking his work station. He yelps, and that gives Hermann the time to straighten. The aide says something to her, and she smiles prettily. Newt is staring a little. Hermann grins. 

“Do not alarm yourself," he says. "It is merely my wife.”

“Your-!” Newt double-takes. He looks at Vanessa, at Hermann, back at Vanessa. “Dude!” he cries. He recognises her, of course. She’s a model, sells clothes and perfumes and cars and reminds people that there is still beauty in this horrid world. Newt claps a hand on Hermann’s shoulder, and Hermann doesn’t quite flinch. “Dude, you did good.”

“Yes, well,” Hermann blushes a little and straightens his collar.

“Go on, get outta here,” says Newt. “I’ll text you when your thingo dings.”

“That ‘thingo’ costs as much as all your rotten entrails put together,” snaps Hermann, "and it's going to save the world." But the irritation is only skin deep; he's glad that the hand on his shoulder is gone, glad that the conversation is on science instead of his personal life.

“Whatever,” says Newt, with an approving smile as Vanessa puts her hand on Hermann’s arm and tugs him away. She’s only there for a few days, not even a week. She knows she’ll never distract her husband from his first love, but she still wants to make this time count.

Hermann’s strangely glad that Newt approves, even though he doesn’t care that the man doesn’t approve of his chosen field or his dress or his language or his hair or his music or the very particular way he takes his tea, he’s glad that Newt approves of Vanessa. It’s not until much later, Vanessa breathing beside him in the dark, that he realises that it shouldn’t matter so much if Newt approves of Vanessa.

“Thinking about numbers?” asks Vanessa.

“No.”

She rolls over and puts a leg over his, thigh pressed against his bad hip, and splays her fingers out over his chest. “Then what?”

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s…” he does not know how to articulate this feeling when he hardly knows what it even is. “Nothing.” She ‘hms’, because she knows her husband, and says nothing else, because she knows her husband.

 

 

Stop. Restart. Imagine Newt meets Vanessa without Hermann around.

 

 

The woman walks into the laboratory as though she’s grown up around them, but Newt recognises her and would bet his favourite jeans that she’s never seen one outside of a photoshoot. He’s wrong, of course, but he doesn’t know that.

“He-” he starts up too fast and hits his head against the light overlooking his work station. It cracks against his skull and the beautiful woman laughs. She’s blond, and bosomy, and as soon as he wonders what she’s doing in a place like this he berates himself. There's no reason a beautiful woman shouldn't be in a laboratory.

“Hello,” he says, a little embarrassed by his own thoughts and a little embarrassed by his fumbling around. “Can I help you?”

“I was looking for Dr Gottlieb.”

“Oh, he,” Newt looks over at Hermann’s half of the room. He can’t remember when he left, but can guess where he’s gone. “He’s probably in his room.”

“His leg?” asks the woman.

Newt nods, a little uncomfortable. He always is, whenever Hermann’s limp is mentioned directly.

“Can you tell me where his room is?”

“Even better,” says Newt, turning off the light and snapping off his gloves. “I’ll show you.”

He walks slowly for a few steps before realising that simply because he is going to see Hermann, that doesn’t mean he has to walk as slowly as his lab partner.

“How do you know Hermann?” he asks, after they’ve exchanged names.

“We met when I was in New York.”

“Oh yeah? Awesome. Love New York. Such a big place, all those lights. Enjoying Tokyo?”

“Haven’t seen it,” Vanessa admits. “I landed and came here. I only have a few days.”

“So you’re going to waste it on him?” asks Newt. “Not, of course… He’s great! I really mean that,” he adds, when she raises an eyebrow. She’s laughing. At him, probably, but at least she’s not angry. “I mean, I’m kinda in love with the dude, but he’s a bit, well,” he turns down a corridorr and she keeps pace. “Abrasive is the kind word, I think.”

She laughs again, and it’s a very pretty sound. The elevator comes. He wishes he hadn’t said the L-word, because if he hadn’t perhaps he could see if being trapped in a room with alien entrails and an awful mathematician hasn’t destroyed his ability to flirt.

“How do you know him?” he pushes on. “It has to be something binding to keep him around. I have to be around him, the whole saving the world gig.” He grins; the elevator grinds. “Sister?”

“Wife,” she says, and the elevator stops right outside of Hermann’s room, leaving Newt staring and stunned.

“It’s, uh,” he licks his lips. “That room right there. Good to meet you.”

“I hope to see you around,” she grins, and before the elevator doors close again he sees her adjust her hair and knock eagerly on Hermann’s door.

Married.

Of course.

 

Fuck.

 

 

 

Again.

 

 

Newt kisses Hermann four days before his birthday, because it’s his present to himself and when Hermann rejects him he figures he’ll be over it enough that his birthday won’t suck too much. He picks his moment properly, a moment they’ve repeated at least a dozen times every day since they became the only two people sharing this awful lab. They’re each on their own side of that fucking line, and some days it’s stress and sometimes it’s pain, and some days it’s just that they haven’t gotten any sleep and the fucking kaiju don’t obey any laws known on their planet, and nothing works and people are dying, and everything is on their two shoulders and it’s too. Fucking. Much.

So they scream at each other, in German and in English and sometimes in Latin. They scream about broken petri dishes or corrupt files or lukewarm tea or anything else they can think of.

Hermann takes a breath to adjust his grip on his cane and to formulate another impossibly complicated sentence regarding the details of his latest model to explain the Breach when Newt grabs the bastard by the collar and tugs him over the line.

He expected Hermann to freeze up, to do nothing before shoving him away. He didn’t expect the man to return the kiss, so when he does Newt leaps back, thinking for a horrid moment that he’s startled the man enough to fall off his cane.

“Was that all?” snaps Hermann.

“Oh,” breathes Newt. “You, you want this. You do, don’t you? I mean,” he’s interrupted by Hermann catching his lower lip in his teeth.

The line is crossed, the line is broken, Newt on Hermann’s side because while there’s a lot of flat surfaces where Newt works, they’re all stained with kaiju. The sex is fast and desperate and as aggressive as their everyday arguments.

That’s not the only time it happens.

They don’t talk about it, they yell at each other and they kiss, and they fuck, and Newt feels like his soul will explode inside of him.

It’s nearly a month later when Newt finds out about Vanessa. He usually takes his lunch out of the lab, because his side is a biohazard and Hermann refuses to have crumbs dropped on his calculations, but that day he’s running timed tests, and he leaves lunch midway through.

He hears laughter, and pauses in the doorway, bewildered. Sure, he knows Hermann laughs. He laughs when he gets something right, this stupid little giggle that he blushes and covers up with a scowl and some jabbed remark at something - anything, not necessarily Newton, sometimes it’ll be a chair in the wrong place or a pencil with a broken tip. It’s just, lately, there’s been no laughing. There’s scarcely been smiling. There’s too much tension in the whole of Tokyo for such levity.

He creeps into the lab and sees Hermann leaning back in a chair smiling - smiling! - at a computer screen. There’s a woman there, holding a child. The child is cute, blond and blue-eyed in that way that children are. Newt’s first thought is that Hermann’s never mentioned being an uncle, and then his brain catches up to his ears and he realises that the woman is talking about the child’s ‘daddy’ in a manner that very much implies that father is Hermann.

Newt can’t breathe.

He simply can’t.

He nearly stumbles out of there except that he really does need the results of this test. He walks swiftly into the room, scarcely glancing at Hermann, and adjusts the temperate on the oven, peering through the glass to check the petri dishes. They’re growing bright and colourful, faster than anything he’s seen before.

When he gets back from finishing lunch he puts on his headphones and ignores the good doctor entirely.

Of course, this doesn’t last, because Hermann gets mad at his numbers not fitting together and lately the way he’s been dealing with this is by having sex. He yells a little, just generally, to get Newt’s attention, and when he rises to the bait Hermann kisses him.

Newt freezes up.

“No.”

He pulls away, takes a step back.

“Dude, no.”

Hermann splutters at the rejection. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no. I saw her, I saw your - I saw her. Your kid. When you were Skyping the other day. I’m not going to be that person.”

“I can explain,” says Hermann.

Newt crosses his arms over his chest and gives him a look meaning, yes, you better fucking do that.

“That was Clara,” says Hermann. He quashes the automatic smile that comes after breathing that name. It’s so new to him, this daughter thing, and he still can’t believe it.

“And the woman?” asks Newt, refusing to let the dopey, adorable look get to him.

“That was - ah. Newton, you must listen to me, before you react foolishly.”

“Yeah?” Newt challenges him.

“Her name is Vanessa,” he takes a breath, braces himself. “We’ve been married three years.”

“Fucking Christ!” yells Newton. “All this time? You bastard, you fucking grade-A bastard.”

Hermann grinds his teeth together and sighs. “Newton. Newton.” Newton keeps yelling. “Doctor Geiszler!” he snaps. “Listen to me.”

“Oh, this has gotta be good,” sneers Newton.

“Vanessa and I have an understanding.”

“You cheat on her, and she politely looks the other way? No way. Dude, that is fucked up -”

“Doctor Geiszler, will you cease your prattling! I am trying to explain the concept of polyamory, but since it appears you have no desire to understand the particular mechanics of my life, enjoy knowing I’ll never suck your cock again.” He turns, shoulders stiff and square, and marches back to his impossible numbers. At least they have the potential to sort themselves out.

Newton’s standing there gaping a bit, mouth working uselessly.

“What was that?” he eventually manages. “What did you say?” Feeling irritated and petty and horny, Hermann ignores him until Newt crosses that line and touches his shoulder. “Poly - what was that?”

“Polyamory,” snaps Hermann. “I suggest you look it up.” His mind is working on no less than six different levels, and one of them has figured out a possible solution to this equation. He finds a piece of chalk. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Newt snatches at his shoulders.

“No! What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!”

“Now you want to know,” scoffs Hermann. “It means this: I’m free to do as I desire, as is she. I’m away too much,” and she meets too many beautiful people - he holds in a smile, keeping that thought to himself, “and it works.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Was it ever going to matter?”

“Uh, hello,” says Newt. “It just did. Now. The other day when I saw some kid calling you daddy.”

“I… Apologise. I have hardly had much practice at this sort of thing, of late.” He shifts from foot to cane to foot again. “I am not certain what this means to you. I did not want to complicate things that did not demand… complicating.”

“Oh,” says Newt. And then, because holding things in is for other people, “I fucking love you, dude. This is - I want this. I mean.” He swallows, licks his lips. “You’re it, for me. I’m glad you’re married and got - Clara?” Hermann nods. “But for me, I’m not built like that. You’re it,” he repeats.

Hermann says nothing. Then, because he’s horny but there’s a world to save, he scribbles down his idea, a string of numbers that spray chalk dust down the blackboard. Then, he turns, pivoting on one foot to look at Newt. “I think, Dr Geiszler, that I can work with that.”

“You can?” asks Newt, a little breathless. “You sure? I mean, it’s love. Not a crush. I did say that, didn’t I? Sometimes I have dreams where I’m in the lab with you, and they’re really nice because then it’s like I’m around you even when I’m not. I love you. It’s a lot. It’s okay… If it’s too much. I know I’m too much.”

Hermann takes a step forward, leaning heavily to one side. “No,” he says. “You love me. I cannot promise the same. But I can work with that.”

Newt lets out a breath of relief. “Oh, awesome,” he blunders, and kisses Hermann. “Do you have numbers you need to do, or can I suck you off?”


End file.
